Curmudgeon's Corner, 2001 Archives
. Comments on the Proposed Nuclear Waste Act, October 26, 2001
. Toward an off-oil policy, November 7, 2001
. National Airline Deprivatization, November 23, 2001
. Letter to the Bank of Canada on interest rate policy, December 1, 2001
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{The following comments on the nuclear fuel waste act,
were submitted on October 26, 2001 to the
Hon. Peter Milliken, M.P. for Kingston and the Islands, with
copies to the members of the House Standing Committee
on Natural Resources and opposition critics}
[For a number of reasons, the proposed Bill does not deal effectively or responsibly with problems associated with nuclear fuel waste. Most importantly, the Bill does not address the overriding issue of nuclear fuel waste security and public safety.]
Given the events of September 11, 2001 and beyond, it is of the utmost urgency to deal effectively with the question of the security of nuclear fuel waste, both the generation and storage of these substances, on a short as well as long-term basis.
As participants in the "war on terrorism," Canadians can no longer assume that they are immune to the kinds of violent and destructive acts that have been taking place in the U.S. This is especially the case with our nuclear facilities and most assuredly, with our growing stockpiles of radioactive and toxic nuclear fuel wastes. Large scale releases of these materials into our biosphere could be unimaginably catastrophic.
Currently stored at reactor sites (either in water-filled pools or dry storage cement canisters), nuclear fuel waste, is an attractive terrorist target.
Recognizing that nuclear reactors will continue to be vulnerable targets for some time after they have permanently ceased operation (until the core has cooled and the radioactive waste has decayed) the nuclear waste that is stored must be protected from intentional air and other modes of attack, as well as potential theft.
Technologically, it should be feasible to create an on-reactor-site (waste retrievable) sub-surface hard bunker system which could withstand most attempts at incursion or destruction. At each reactor site, such a facility, permanently guarded by trained anti-terror military personnel, along with all other possible maximum security controls, would be an essential component for public safety in the rather unsafe world of the future.
This Bill must include such a provision identified as a very high priority undertaking!
This bill (or one accompanying it), must require the expeditious phase-out of the production of high-level nuclear waste. First, it must be recognized that, as generators of highly radioactive and toxic wastes, the existence of nuclear power reactors poses an unacceptable threat to the safety and security of Canadians, especially those in the central and eastern parts of the Country. Additionally, severe damage to economic infrastructure which could result from successful terrorist attacks on Canada's nuclear facilities, would inevitably have serious consequences and impacts on the rest of the Nation.
Commercial reactors are extremely vulnerable to attack from both foreign and domestic terrorists. The sobering reality is that security of nuclear power facilities can be neither completely guaranteed nor perfectly realized.
This Bill (or a new one accompanying it), must initiate an expedited phaseout of nuclear power, improve energy efficiency in all sectors of our economy and initiate a rapid transition to renewable electricity sources. Linked through the extensive and fragile electrical grid system, nuclear power plants are one of the most vulnerable components of our electric power infrastructure and present the largest risk of catastrophic damage, whether through accident or by design. As such, nuclear waste-producing power generation poses an unacceptable risk to our society and environment.
NO CENTRALIZED TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT STORAGE OF NUCLEAR FUEL WASTE
Reference to the two options for (temporary or permanent) centralized storage of nuclear waste should be dropped from this Bill. Such storage would establish additional nuclear targets without meaningfully reducing the risk at operating nuclear power plants. In addition to the obvious accident and security risks associated with long-term, continuous and exposed transportation of radioactive materials, a centralized storage facility would itself be a difficult-to-secure nuclear materials site. Specifically, the design characteristics for such facilities would feature massive, exposed surface operations, (loading, unloading, packaging, etc.), which would establish potentially larger, highly vulnerable and more devastating targets for attack.
Plutonium is one of the nuclear fuel waste products which would be of greatest interest to terrorists or rogue states. As we know from official sources in the U.S., a relatively small quantity of reactor-grade plutonium can be used to construct a highly destructive nuclear device. And apparently, it does not take a genius to accomplish such a feat.
Even the centralized geological isolation option would not completely secure nuclear fuel waste since the plutonium requires over one hundred thousand years for it to decay. Such a facility would have to be guarded virtually forever. Some scientists believe that the plutonium would be accessible to those who wish to acquire it for nuclear weapons. For example, a 1996 study by Professor P. F. Peterson of the University of California, Berkeley, Nuclear Engineering Department concluded that it would be much faster and much less expensive to recover plutonium from a repository than to produce it by uranium enrichment or in a nuclear reactor.
In effect, an underground repository could become a future "plutonium mine."
Security and public safety are not the only reasons for eliminating the underground repository option from the Bill. The Federal Environmental Review (Seaborn) Panel report, released in February 1998 concluded that the Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) burial concept was not acceptable to the public. The report also identified technical problems with the concept.
The Seaborn Panel recommended that an independent agency be formed at arms length from AECL and the nuclear utilities, in order to manage the programs related to long-term nuclear fuel waste management, including detailed comparison of waste management options.
Rather than establish an independent agency as recommended by the Panel, Bill C-27 would create a private corporation as the waste management organization (WMO). It would be comprised of the owners of nuclear fuel waste. As specified in the Bill, they are Ontario Power Generation Inc.(formerly, Ontario Hydro), New Brunswick Power Corporation, Hydro-Québec, and AECL.
This is nothing short of a mixture of privatization and conflict of interest run wild!
The Panel obviously wanted impartiality and objectivity in the management of nuclear fuel waste. The WMO in this Bill is comprised of many of the same groups and individuals that spent fifteen years studying and promoting one particular (underground burial) option, while denigrating other options.
If ever there was an activity which should be accountable to the public through their elected representatives, disposition of nuclear waste is it. This Bill should establish a non-partisan, independent agency reporting directly to the Parliament of Canada and audited by the Auditor General of Canada.
Section 20 of this Bill provides for a change of approach if the WMO is unable ". . . for technical reasons beyond its control, to implement the approach that was selected. . ." If that happens, a new approach based on new scientific knowledge can be considered.
This is a very restrictive clause in that the three designated options in the Bill must be considered before any new approach is entertained. We should be open to new and promising options at any time.
New technology must not take a back seat to the three options set forth in this Bill. An example of this is ongoing research in some countries into accelerator transmutation of nuclear waste (ATW). ATW is a process in which long-lived radioisotopes are converted into short-lived ones and inert substances, using neutrons from an accelerator.
For instance, Los Alamos scientist Francesco Venneri has stated that if the goal of ATW is met, the radiotoxicity of ATW-treated waste after three hundred years would be less than that of untreated waste after one hundred thousand years.
In FY 1999, in its Energy and Water Appropriation Act, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE), to conduct a study of ATW and to prepare, a "road map" which would forecast needed research areas, time table, costs and schedule. Released November 1, 1999, the "road map", with considerable international scientific input, described in detail, a five year, two hundred eighty million ($280,000,000) dollar project.
By July, 2001, DOE's advanced accelerator application (AAA) grants were being distributed to some of the major U.S. universities.
The DOE is investigating ATW as a possible means of facilitating the long-term management of a repository system. But some scientists have speculated that ATW, developed to its full potential, might preclude the need for the U.S. planned underground repository altogether.
An attractive scenario from a safety and security standpoint would be to expeditiously phase out nuclear power while rendering the accumulated wastes inert.
At the very least, Bill C-27 should be crafted to permit a
Canadian WMO to take a hard, and timely look at the prospects
for ATW and any other nuclear waste management technologies that
might become available.
The proposed Bill requires major revisions in the interest of public security and safety, as well as impartiality and objectivity. Changes should be made as follows:
1. creation of an on-reactor-site (waste retrievable) sub-surface hard bunker system which could withstand most attempts at incursion and/or destruction. At each reactor site, such a facility, permanently guarded by trained anti-terror military personnel, along with all other possible maximum security controls, would be an essential component for public safety in the rather unsafe world of the future.
2. expeditious phase-out of the production of high-level nuclear waste, as the existence of nuclear power reactors poses an unacceptable threat to the safety and security of Canadians.
3. for public security, safety and other reasons given in the text above, reference to the two options for (temporary or permanent) centralized storage of nuclear waste should be dropped from this Bill, including that of permanent geological isolation.
4. an independent agency be formed at arms' length from AECL and the nuclear utilities, in order to manage the programs related to long-term nuclear fuel waste management. This agency would report directly to the Parliament of Canada and be audited by the Auditor General of Canada.
5. The Canadian Waste Management Organization should be able to consider any alternative nuclear waste management technologies that may become available, without first having to eliminate the present three options.
Walter Robbins is author of The Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga, full text online at http://www.web.net/~robbins.
796 Hillside Drive, Kingston, Ontario, K7M 5Y8
October 26, 2001
Dear Brent Jang,
Re: your November 7, 2001 Globe and Mail column on the fate of oil prices, I'm glad you mentioned the output figure of 23.2 million barrels per day. Intellectually, we know that oil is a finite, non-renewable resource which took millions of years for mother nature to produce and that we are quickly using it up. Most of us probably do not think much about that when we fill up at the pump. Your column brought it back into perspective. 23 million barrel PER DAY, is a staggering fact, to say the least. You can almost hear that great sucking sound as the oil reserves whither away!
I remember the first off-shore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. An American composer by the name of Virgil Thompson, wrote a wonderful musical score for a highly acclaimed motion picture called "Louisiana Story," back in (I believe) the 1940's. It had beautiful scenes of bird life among the oil rigs. At the time, it seemed incredible that we could or would build oil rigs in the water.
Now we look for oil further out into the oceans, the high arctic and remote places in cental Asia. Will there be any on the moon?
All of which leads me to my main point that there are some positive aspects to higher oil prices, even though it hurts at the pump and in the cost of heating your home. And that is, the early signs of an "off-oil" future have now become unmistakable. Over the past year or so, the world has started to get serious about decentralized (and cleaner) alternatives to oil; i.e., energy sources such as wind, solar, hydrogen, biomass, fuel cells, co-generation, low-head hydro, etc. It is a long list.
Even some of our politicians are getting the message (exceptions include Bush and Cheney!)
Environmental problems aside, our insatiable oil "habit" has foreign policy and political ramifications, some of which are not pleasant to contemplate.
So, as much as it pains me to say so, I hope OPEC continues to play fast and loose with the free market system and manipulates production, to prop up prices and provide more of the motivation we all need in order to get ourselves off-oil before the habit does us all in.
Thanks for your column,
Walter Robbins
November 23, 2001 FAX
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
Your Government must step in and put an end to the sad spectacle and world-class fiasco that is now taking place in the Canadian airline industry.
Please bring back our National Airline. Deprivatize Air Canada NOW! Buy it out and set up a truly first class, publically run Canadian major air traffic carrier which will give superior service at reasonable prices with a high degree of security and safety; something of which all Canadians can be proud!!
Let the private sector take care of the regional needs; but regulate them to assure a high degree of accessibility at reasonable rates.
Deprivatization is necessary to bring back efficiency, effectiveness, profitability and just plain good public management, qualities which all seem to have been lost.
Walter Robbins
796 Hillside Drive,
Kingston, Ontario,
K7M 5Y8
Mr. David A. Dodge December 1, 2001
Governor
Bank of Canada
Ottawa
Dear Mr. Dodge,
There is an old saying about how a virtue, when pursued too far, can become a vice. So it is with the Bank of Canada's interest rate policy.
The old drug stores carried universal remedies; elixirs that cure all ailments. The Bank of Canada's pharmacopeia appears to consist only of one snake oil patent medicine known as "interest rate manipulation." (You should change the name of your institution from the Bank of Canada to "IRM Canada").
Before our bloated "new economy" really started to go down the tube last Spring, some fine tuning of interest rates may have made some economic sense. Now, interest rate manipulation in an attempt to stem a profound economic downturn, is clearly not working and may, in fact, be counterproductive.
The recent rounds of interest rate reductions are starting to yield significant negative consequences which, if continued, will help assure that the economy will be in tatters for many years to come.
To illustrate my point, as a senior citizen on a modest fixed income, I have not indulged in speculative investments; relying rather on money market funds, government bonds, etc, as a means of off-setting decreasing annual income from registered retirement funds. Those funds now earn next to nothing. Bank savings account interest is in the "double digits;" something like 10 cents a month.
As a direct result of recent interest rate cuts, millions of seniors in the same boat as I, will obviously not go out and help stimulate the consumer economy. We have no choice but to use our financial resources primarily for the basics; i.e., food, clothing, health, shelter maintenance, local transportation. Trips abroad on Air Canada? Forget it!
I might add that these "basics" have also experienced some inflation over the past five years.
Seniors aside, what of the rest of the population? How are they going to fare under the Bank of Canada interest rate policies?
Not very well!
According to all reports, the on the ground spending spree of the last five to ten years has resulted in a very high level of consumer debt. Even many two income families have reached the saturation point and are trying to make multiple credit card interest payments at obscene rates once known as usury. Tax relief and lower interest rates may help some of these people with their monthly consumer debt payments, but, make no mistake; such measures will not significantly "stimulate" the economy. At the end of the day, under the current deteriorating economic circumstances, people are not likely to run out and "shop till they drop," even if you lower the bank rate to a flat zero!
You may view the current "hot" housing market as a positive event. It is not! This particular housing market boom is mainly driven by low mortgage rates (which your elixir has produced) as well as much hype from the real estate and banking industries. Rather than making intelligent decisions based on rational analysis, many young people are being seduced into taking undue risks on large mortgages contingent on their current employment situations. The same thing happened during the late 1920's. The long-term result was, to coin a phrase, "dispossession city."
I had hoped never to see anything like that again, but your overly simplistic interest rate reduction policy could very well lead to such a result.
However, you do have other remedies in your medicine cabinet. The Bank of Canada could turn to its' other powers and authorities to really help improve the economic situation.
For example, the Bank has the authority to essentially create money though its loan process, in much the same way commercial banks do. Why not make direct large infrastructure loans (even interest free ones) to the provinces, earmarked for much needed public works projects in our deteriorating inner cities? Kingston could sure use that kind of help.
Much employment could be created through such a measure and the public would not have to pay two or three times the cost in interest to a commercial bank, over thirty years, for the same municipal road or sewer system improvement.
That is one way that the Bank of Canada could truly help the economy; through a much needed conservation approach rather than the futile interest rate cuts which can only increase the problems of a debt-ridden and battered consumer-oriented economy.
I recall another famous phrase which could be used to describe the Bank of Canada's current approach to economics. "Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead!"
The time has come to change course.
Walter Robbins
796 Hillside Drive
Kingston, Ontario
K7M 5Y8